01-11-2006 - Traces, n.10
Experience
The Reasonable is not Merely the Measurable
In science as well, experience cannot be limited to the measure of what can be proven, because man seeks reality’s total meaning. A contribution from the study of the history of medicine by Giancarlo Cesana
I have been asked to contribute on the value of experience in science; in particular, in the history of medicine. It can be useful, especially in relation to the concerns the Pope expressed in Regensburg, and later at the Congress of the Catholic Church in Italy, in Verona, and most recently, at the inauguration of the academic year at the Lateran University. The Pope has emphasized how in the West, because of the influence of the experimental sciences, reason has undergone an undue reduction. In cultural and intellectual spheres, the majority consider reasonable only that which can be in some way measured. All the rest, all that is not objectively measurable, belongs to subjective faith or, at best, in the words of Popper (the most popular philosopher of science of the last century), to “other” religions, not better defined.
The case of Galileo
In effect, especially after Galileo, also because of the ecclesiastical condemnation he underwent, knowledge has evolved within an apparently irremediable division: on the one hand, scientific knowledge, valid for all; on the other, knowledge through faith, valid only for those who have it. As is well known, Galileo was requested to recant his affirmation of theories asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because they contradicted Scripture and tradition. Galileo, who was a good Catholic (he even had a daughter who was a nun) recanted, murmuring the famous phrase, “And yet it moves” (referring to the Earth). His intuition was not demonstrated at all in his time, and the Church’s position had its justifications. However, since progress of astronomical studies demonstrated the exactness of the Galilean intuition, the Church’s position was called obscure and its proposal subjective, not adequately documentable by experience. Here, we have experience being limited to the measure of what can be proven, without the possibility of going beyond in the search for the total meaning of reality. In addition, since what one proves is contingent and provisional, even inferences of a general nature–for example, the laws of physics–are valid until someone disproves them. Thus, analogously, everything–the universe, the world, the “I”–becomes contingent and provisional, and someone speaking of a definitive truth and hope only says so in terms that are at best evocative, never compelling or binding for everyone.
The experience of illness
The object of the study of medicine is illness. It is not “cold” like physics or mathematics; it is dramatic, and even dangerous, not only for the sick person, but also for those who treat him. For centuries and centuries, approaching sick people has frequently meant risking contagion. Howard Ricketts died in 1910 in Mexico City, identifying “rickettsia,” the agents of petechial (spotted) fever. Thus, in ancient times, infectious people were first of all shunned or moved away. For the sick to be welcomed and assisted, Christianity was necessary, such as happened with the monks who created convents with places of hospitality for the poor and the sick, who were treated “as Christ Himself.” Later, definitively, Guy of Montpellier founded the Hospitaller Order of the Holy Spirit, recognized by Pope Innocent III in 1198, supported and spread by the Church. Civil hospitals came much later. In any case, without the monks and nuns there would not even have been nursing activity, which for centuries was practically the only form of relief for the sick, given the impotence of physicians. Without the announcement of the Resurrection of Christ, illness was the beginning of the end, a curse to flee from, warding off the evil god who had provoked it. With the Resurrection of Christ, death is no longer the definitive word on life. The hope of life is not killed by the risk it entails. One understands well that, in order to face this risk, in order to live through illness and treat patients even to the point of facing death, an idea or a sentiment are not enough; an experience is indispensable, an experience of new humanity and knowledge that does not contradict reason, because it opens it, empowering it, enabling it not to stop at the painful and “incurable” limit of human existence.
The study of medicine
Without Christianity, not only would there have been no hospitals, but there would not have been the birth of universities either, these modern places of science, begun precisely because of the impetus to seek the truth of everything; thus, the name uni-versitas–toward the unity of knowledge. The Abbey of Montecassino was at the origin of the Salernitan School, the first medical school, forerunner of the universities of Bologna, Paris, Cambridge, and Oxford, all created through the impulse (and under the control) of the Church. The first fundamentals of the experimental method–that of Galileo and of the modern science that rejects faith–were established by Albertus Magnus (Thomas Aquinas’s master), Roger Bacon, and, above all, Robert Grosseteste, the first Chancellor of Oxford and then Bishop of Lincoln, the largest diocese of England. In this movement, medicine played a great role both as a factor of the development of knowledge and as knowledge influenced by the other, more exact ones. Following the road of physics and chemistry, it was understood that anatomy has a corresponding physiology; that the efficacy of certain herbs corresponds to substances extracted from them and other similar ones, or different ones, that can be created ex novo or modified. The study of illness as alteration of the entire body led to the study of the alterations of organs, then tissues, then cells (including bacteria), and molecules.
Biological reductionism
Now we are here, in the study of the increasingly small. We run the risk of “disembodying” illness from the sick person, seeking it in the microscopic disorder that seems to be its cause. Surgery not only “cuts” and demolishes, but it transplants, substitutes, and reconstructs, as it waits for new discoveries that will make it increasingly obsolete. However, against this biological and technological reductionism, the sick person–all sick people–continues to demand treatment as a “unity”–not only a physical unity, but a unity of need. Even the most absurd tendencies in medical applications, such as research on embryos and euthanasia itself, are motivated as attempts at greater perfection and happiness, to the point of killing, because perfection and happiness are not possible. In planning healthcare, everybody, and I mean everybody, proclaims that the center must be the patient, the person, who is much more than a biological disorder.
As discussed in a recent document by the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, Beyond Therapy, it can be expected that progress in medicine will not only provide liberation from illness, but also better babies, more efficient psychological and physical performance, longer life, and– why not?–a happier one.
In conclusion, there are two alternatives. Either man sets himself up to be God, even though he can’t be God, and thus produces disasters, or, in science too, he must seek God in order to understand what he is made for. This is the Pope’s suggestion; this is the teaching of the history of medicine, which has always been concerned with men who cannot make it,and who ask, or rather, cry out, to be helped to make it. |